K.W. COMPLEX

K.W. COMPLEX

The collaborative project between Natacha and myself began with a book and a film: an edition titled Im Lande der Morgenstille, Reise-Erinnerungen an Korea otherwise known as In the Land of Morning Calm (1915) containing the travel diary of Norbert Weber in Korea, a monk who was head of a Benedictine community at St. Ottilien in Bavaria, at the beginning of the century, and a documentary of the same title, which he filmed in 1927. I was able to see the photos but could not read the text in German, and Natacha understood German but was unfamiliar with Korean culture. As such, we hoped that we could help each other mutually. We were both well aware of the misunderstandings that could result between the two of us in communicating in English, and the issues that would arise in going back and forth between Korean, German, French, and English translations. In fact, we believed that the gap between the languages should contribute to creating a certain opening within the exhibition.

Norbert Weber’s book was translated and published in Korean right before the exhibition. Before the translated version was available, I had read only the important parts of the book, “important parts” being the pages that Natacha had marked for me. When I read the Korean translation later on, I could see even more clearly that what I took for granted could seem exotic in the eyes of a foreigner. Such a way of working helps me to become more objective when I read texts.

Around that time, I was making a documentary film on the female shaman, Kim Keum-hwa. Naturally, I came to talk about Andrea Kalff, the German “spiritual daughter” of Kim, with Natacha. What was even more striking was that Andrea Kalff lived in a place not far from St. Ottilien where Norbert Weber had headed a monastery. St. Ottilien is like the Benedictine center of Germany and an important Catholic base in Bavaria. Andrea Kalff herself comes from a typical Bavarian Catholic family. We found an element of unexpected drama in the extraordinary coincidence of a long-bearded German monk who travelled all over Korea 100 years ago propagating Christianity and leaving behind an active “visual anthropological” record and a German woman who, 100 years later, came to visit “Keum Hwa Dang” on Ganghwado in Korea all dressed up in a colorful shaman robe.

Many who saw the documents on Norbert Weber, Kim Keum-hwa, and Andrea Kalff showed an interest in our project. We fixed the date of the exhibition following the proposition of the former director of Atelier Hermès, Manu Park, and prepared the show with his successor, Beck Jee-sook. To start off, Beck, Natacha, and I visited Norbert Weber’s monastery in St. Ottilien. Just as Norbert Weber had done when he was in Korea, Natacha and I, as “outsiders,” took photos, which have been included in this publication. However, we tried to use the photos as a straightforward means of recording information rather than as an expression of an anthropological passion.

What intrigued us in the extremely austere and somewhat gothic monastery was its small museum. The museum was a testimony to the many monks who perished in the Benedictine Order’s expansion into the “faraway lands” of Asia and Africa. Their noble spirit of sacrifice was emphasized along with the order’s admiration for the natives and the nature of the faraway lands. However, at the same time, the museum had the racial and expansionist format and collection of a small anthropological museum. The current monastery must be aware of this, and the monks appeared a bit “embarrassed.” What we discovered in Norbert Weber’s photos and film was similar to the rhetoric of the museum, but his works had a deeper dimension to them. The text and images by Natacha in the publication provide a richer insight into the subject.

Natacha came back to Korea when preparations for the exhibition began full scale. We visited a Benedictine monastery in Woegwan in Northern Gyeongsang Province. Monks who had lived in the monastery and died there were buried in the surrounding graveyards. The monk who guided us told us that the residents of the surrounding villages joked that “the area was crawling with bachelor ghosts.” That story was used in Natacha’s installation work. We also took time out to visit the guksadang (shrine that houses the guardian spirit of a village) and Seon Bawi or Zen Rocks, named for their resemblance to a Buddhist monk in a robe, on Mount Inwang. Located smack in the middle Seoul, the place could be considered as the shamanistic center of the city. It is there that Andrea Kalff, before her invocatory rite to become a shaman, had her preparatory ceremony with Kim Keum-hwa. That day, we came across a shaman in prayer. The middle-aged woman was so focused in her prayer that she did not see us when we came closer to film her. Such events, as trivial as they may seem, accumulated to give birth to this exhibition.

The "K" in the title of the exhibition, K.W.Complex, stands for Kim Keum-hwa, and the “W” for Norbert Weber. Between K and W is Andrea. The conversation between the three evokes a complex memory of the different times, religions, societies, and politics that traverse the East and the West, and talks about a certain spiritual situation that neither societies have been able to resolve until now. The earnest spiritual efforts of an individual and the historical significance of religion and culture sometimes clash with and sometimes depend on each other. The reason we chose to use the word “complex” is first and foremost to indicate the complexity of this relationship. However, from a psychoanalytical perspective, the word also suggests important but repressed feelings or thoughts. I am convinced that such feelings or thoughts are tied much more to a “religious” dimension than the artistic and intellectual circle of Korea believes. It is a subject matter that resembles such recurring themes as imperialism, history, and inevitability, which “appear excessively” in the face of individual sickness, death, disaster, and chance in Korea. We wanted to talk about a certain silence, a certain opening in between. For example, between the global history of an immense religious organization and the faith of an individual, there is exchange, but so too a strong sense of rupture and contrast.